ABSTRACT
A simplistic view of Mata Amritanandamayi’s popularity in urban India might see her as providing her middle-class followers some kind of refuge from the stresses and strains of a modern world. This kind of perspective would reinforce the view that the so-called ‘traditional’ Hindu selfhood of these persons is incompatible with the imperatives of ‘modernity’. It would further reinforce the oft-repeated idea of an absolute opposition between Hindu and Western selves, the former representing a traditional and uniquely religious orientation, the latter a modern and rational one.
